Tremor Video Gets $37 Mil; The Reach Of Project Devil; Are You A Data Scientist?

Tremor Video announced that it's latest capital raise of $37 million (with an overall total of $115 million) has just hit its checking account and it plans on going on a shopping spree. Analytics solutions appears to be of interest to Tremor as its CEO, Bill Day, tells Ad Age, "We're becoming more and more of an analytics company and there are other smart people doing interesting things." Read more interesting things. I smell the "engagement" theme as the company wants to prove the value of advertising across its network by showing how consumers interact with it.

Big Ad Buzz

Reuters' Jennifer Saba says Aol's big ad unit "Project Devil" is suffering from a lack of reach as the ads are currently showing on Aol owned-and-operated sites as well as a few partners. Rich Kim from RPA tells Reuters that "about 100 of the top sites on comScore need to adopt the format before it can take off fully. Otherwise, he said, it becomes too costly to produce and place an ad that can't reach a broad audience." Read more. The bottom line - if the "big ad" increases yield, publishers will use it.

Agencies And Hiring

In The Wall Street Journal, reporter Suzanne Vranica says that ad agencies are bracing for an econonmic slowdown. Digitas CEO Laura Lang tells Vranica, "Right now it is about making 'sure we aren't getting too far ahead of revenue.'" Read it. The challenge for agencies, as always, is to keep up with a fast-moving, VC-back ad tech ecosystem that will continue to pump innovative solutions. Can they keep up while managing a hiring freeze or worse? Or will new agencies - or agency models - emerge?

The Ad Data Scientist

In a post on his company's blog, IA Ventures' Roger Ehrenberg (who is invested in MetaMarkets, The Trade Desk and PlaceIQ among others) reviews the changes in advertising over the past 5 years and sees challenges around data only increasing. He writes, "The rise of the data scientist is a phenomenon that is here to stay. And the use of quantitative methods for optimizing both ad spend (demand-side) and inventory management (supply-side) will become increasingly prevalent." Read it.

Searching Cross-Platform

Digital ad platform Ignition One and search marketing technology company DataPop (AdExchanger.com Q&A) have announced a new partnership that will integrate DataPop tech to "to improve search ad relevancy." Read the release. "How many channels does your platform address?" - this will increasingly become a key question as marketers and publishers look for efficiency in targeting and sweet ROI nectar.

Giving Good Ad Tech

Sporting a new website, Yieldbot CEO Jonathan Mendez was interviewed on DIGIDAY by Brian Morrissey last week and he does not mince words as Mendez offers opinions on a range of digital ad topics including: "My .02 on DoubleClick 2010 report: Agencies wasting client money on creative & serving Flash & Rich Media." Read more from the Mendez cauldron.... including the Intent Sandwich.

Infographic Tuesday

Email is the theme for this infographic as ReadWriteWeb explains, "The gist is this: while Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus all get tons of interest, email is quietly chugging away as the workhorse of the connected world." See it!